This week David Martinson joins us to talk all about Watching Dogs, and how crazy it is. Oh, and The Game Awards… or… something…

A ton to catch up on! If you’re going to PSX this week, go say hi to Alex! If you’re at the Game Awards, we have predictions! If you are playing Final Fantasy and want to hear us talk about it!… Well, we recorded this on Saturday. Relax. We’ll get there.

In games this week we hear about Watch Dogs 2, catch up with Batman The Telltale Series, hear what Tony has to say about Pokemon, finish Dishonored 2, and get wide-eyed for 4K TVs.

News this week has us going through all the pre-PSX/Game Awards rumors, and then we take an hour to go through all The Game Award nominees and predict what we think will win!

After a long delay, the Monthly Passions Podcast is back. A combination of Extra Life, scheduling troubles, and editing woes combined to put the kibosh on the 9th installment of the podcast. They failed.

Instead, the podcast is being posted sans some of the most stylish editing and narration. It had to be sacrificed to get the episode up, and I think it’s worth the cost, as I had three great guests on to talk about some big October games.

Old friend Harold Price joins the crew to talk Pokémon and rumors and whatnot.

Hey! Have you been watching Alex Talks? You should be! Go check out that latest episode!

In games this week, Alex discusses Dishonored 2, we revisit the classics of Bloodborne, enter the first Stardew update, and finally find out if we are going to catch them all with Pokémon Sun and Moon!

In news we talk about what is happening with The Switch, Zelda’s possible delay, we touch on the voice actor strike, and get caught up in the Persona delay.

SilverPR has us go gaming, SNES edition, and Harold destroys us. Thems the deets. No other emails!

That’s the show, thank you so much for listening! Apologies for the delay!

]]>Jurge Cruzhttp://jcruzalvarez.tumblr.comhttp://irrationalpassions.com/?p=70102016-11-23T00:48:15Z2016-11-22T15:00:02ZRead More »]]>There are few times when I can actually make myself listen to new music. I have a hard time listening to full albums and I usually skip songs on playlists that don’t grab me thirty seconds in.

While I at least try to listen to new music, I can’t remember the last time I listened to the music of a video game that I had not played yet.

To be honest, I’m not sure how common of a practice this is. Like many, I listen to tunes from my favorite games, but I never really considered listening to a game’s soundtrack without having the context of the game it’s supposed to score.

But recently, while doing my usual reading and studying, I decided to take the plunge.

I put my headphones on, and I went searching for music. These are some of my favorite discoveries.

hackmud

Composer: Lena Raine

Favorite Track: “ｈａｃｋｍｕｄ – 0000 port_epoch”

There’s only one track from hackmud’s soundtrack available publicly without having to purchase the game, and that track evokes a sense of curiosity and belonging that it might just get you to jump in.

Having not actually played hackmud, I can tell you that it’s a game that recreates the hacking culture that occurred on home computers in the 1990s. It’s a subject that I have very little knowledge about and sounds like an intimidating game to jump into if you don’t know much about coding, but I found myself becoming attached to this specific track. It became a regular song on my playlist for when I commute home from class late at night.

The track starts off subdued with a low electronic hum that fades in and out; it’s comforting yet cool. Small, high pitched notes that feel enthusiastic are peppered on top of that low hum. They begin to build up to something. Not to a “drop”, but to a revelation. A blast of synth hits, like massive gates opening up in front of you to reveal a never before seen landscape. What almost sounds like a digital chorus then takes over, evoking a sense of wonder for the rest of the track.

This feeling of discovery is why I keep listening to it when I’m driving at night. It’s a feeling that says, “You don’t know what lies ahead, but go discover the unknown.” Even though I myself have the same commute every night, it feels good to pretend that I’m some sort of night rider.

I imagine that this track plays early on in the game because of that. It feels welcoming and given that the game focuses on a hidden subculture, it makes sense why it has that build up and release.

It communicates, “Congratulations, you found us.”

Ori and the Blind Forest

Composer:Gareth Coker

Favorite Track: “Naru, Embracing the Light (feat. Rachel Mellis).”

Ori and the Blind Forest is a sidescrolling platformer that that is of the metroidvania ilk. Listening to just the soundtrack, you would think that it’s the score to a Disney animated epic. One that is filled with as much excitement and wonder as it is filled with melancholy.

The track “First Steps Into Sunken Glades” has this feeling of loss. The slow and spaced out keys of what I assume to be a piano really drive this sentiment. What sounds like a violin creates long somber notes. Towards the end of the song it begins to pick up. It becomes a bit lighter. It then transitions into a new track with a lot more energy. This track sounds a lot more like what I had in mind when I was told that this was the soundtrack to a platformer. The type of song that would play underneath a game while you jump around its world

Contrasting from those somber moments are tracks like “Naru, Embracing the Light (feat. Rachel Mellis).” It’s a boisterous track that feels lively. Its upbeat tempo and use of specific instruments place your mind in a tropical habitat and makes the track feel like it’s powered by some sort of natural life force. It’s one of my favorite tracks from this soundtrack and it’s a great track to put on when I want to jump right into any work in front of me.

Upon reflection, I realized that Ori and the Blind Forest’s soundtrack is so grand and Hollywood-like, that I might have not appreciated it had I listened to it with context of the game it scores. I play a lot of big video games. I watch a lot of big movies. Both of these are usually accompanied by orchestral soundtracks similar to Ori and the Blind Forest that I feel like I never really appreciate and I honestly don’t know why. Perhaps this is a subject that warrants its own, separate discussion. Regardless, Ori and the Blind Forest’s soundtrack is one memorable composition.

Poly Bridge

From the outside looking in, Poly Bridge just seems like silly fun. This may or may not be true, but I can tell you that I found the sounds of Poly Bridge’s acoustic guitar soundtrack to be nostalgic, sincere, and romantic.

I originally listened to the sounds of Poly Bridge while I was studying for an exam. I was sitting at a light brown wooden desk, at a crowded public library. Across from me and facing in my direction, was this young woman with red hair.

The music starts off lighthearted. It’s opening track has an optimistic feeling to it and a catchy beat. But then the mood slows, the track “On the Road” begins playing, and I involuntary begin remembering the Fall of 2011.

It’s a rainy and grey weekend. I’m driving down the street and my hands have a tight, damp hold on the steering wheel. I arrive at my destination, a Chili’s, the place where my current girlfriend, who I’ve spent five years with, had our first date.

As it plays and new tracks begin, I remember different moments of the night.

Like how after dinner, the rain stopped and we decided to go out for a walk around a local strip mall. As the track “Are We There Yet” plays and the guitar riffs, I remember the modern look the strip had. How the lights of the store’s neon signs reflected on the pools of water on the ground. I remember how I made the idiotic suggestion of stopping by a Target retail store, probably because I could feel the night coming to an end and I didn’t want it to.

It’s an evocative soundtrack that had me grinning like an idiot, staring off into space, remembering the past. As I regained my focus, I realized that the red haired woman across from me was giving me a judgemental stare.

I’m certainly more interested in Poly Bridge now than I was before I listened to the game’s music, but I wonder if I will experience some sort emotional whiplash if I ever played it and listened to its music while playing with its colorful cars and bridges.

If there is one thing that I have gathered from this musical escapade, it’s that we should try listening to the music of games that we’ve never played. It can be an interesting thing to see what you can get out of the experience. I for one am ready to say that Poly Bridge is the best video game soundtrack of 2016, and I haven’t even played the game.

]]>Logan Wilkinsonhttp://irrationalpassions.com/?p=69712016-10-28T14:38:09Z2016-10-28T14:38:09ZMafia 3 is an important game. It’s that simple. Weaving a story of revenge, the crippling effects of systemic racism and sexism, and a moving look into the state of America at the close of the 1960’s, Mafia 3 manages to give a more brutal, honest, and penetrating look into the soul of America in the 60’s and the greatest of its sins than any game that has come before it. This is a game about racism that is both direct and subtle.

Mafia 3 is brutal and unflinching in it’s look into racism and the near overwhelming way it found itself into every facet and institution of the Old South. Films and TV can of course tell powerful stories that open us to harrowing glimpses into that time and place, yet Mafia 3 is so effective for the simple reason that, I am Lincoln Clay.

No other medium can so effectively and powerfully place me in someone else’s shoes. Seeing someone in a film getting called heinous names and chased out of stores is far different than being the one getting screamed out and tailed by the police simply because of the color of your skin.

There is a feature of Mafia 3 that I haven’t seen too many people talk about, but that has stuck with me from almost the opening seconds. Any time you walk past a police officer their attention is drawn to you. They will begin to walk towards you, tell you to get a move on, and then follow you, keep an eye on you once you begin to walk away. Stay near them for too long and they very quickly become aggressive and confrontational.

This is an astounding gameplay design. There are many games where you play as a disgusting, ugly, horrible person. Many games where you play as someone who has committed horrible actions, see: every GTA release to date. There, the police are something to be concerned about only when committing the vicious acts of mayhem that so often occur in front of them. Yet, when you are simply walking the streets of Liberty City, San Andreas, or Vice City, the police pay no attention to you. They walk by, smile, and generally just go about their business. This is not the case in Mafia 3.

This hit me really hard and was coupled with another powerful gameplay feature, when a few hours into the game I decided to walk into a bar to go interrogate someone. I drove up to the bar in question and without thinking did the seemingly obvious thing, the thing that I have spent the past 24 years, both in real life and in video games doing: I walked through the front door and into the building.

Except I had forgotten one key detail. I am a white man in 2016, Lincoln Clay is a black man in the 1960’s deep South. In one instance, all hell broke loose.

I walked through the door, made it about three feet towards the guy I needed to talk to, when the owner of the bar was suddenly screaming for me to get the hell out of his place. I didn’t have a wanted level, I hadn’t committed any crimes, I had merely walked into his establishment.

I paid no attention and kept walking to my target. I got to about two feet from him before the owner came out from around the counter blocking me from going any further, got right in my face and started screaming racial slurs. I was understandably caught off guard. The other guests in the bar all started to turn and look at us, a few starting to walk over.

For a micro-second I thought they might intervene on my behalf, but a lifetime spent passionately studying history knew better; that wasn’t how this story went. Surely enough, a crowd surrounded me, and started to yell that I need to get out of this place right now. So I did. The owner called the cops anyway.

As I walked out and rounded the corner, thinking of a new way to go about talking to the man in the bar, I saw a cop walking towards me. This was still before I knew the full extent of the cops laser focus on Lincoln,so without thinking, I walked towards the cop. I got about two steps in before he noticed me, and screamed for me to, “get the hell outta here boy.” For the second time in less than a minute, I was caught off guard.

I walked back into the bar, got punched in the face, stumbled out, caught the police officer’s attention again, and at the same time the cops the owner had called had arrived, who were not very happy to see me. Meanwhile, a few bar patrons had come out after me. I was trapped between a rock and a hard place. Angry armed police on one hand, and racist, pissed, drunk patrons on the other. I had just wanted to talk to someone.

Mafia 3 takes place in 1968, one of the most pivotal, tumultuous, and chaotic years in American history. This is the year that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, the year that Robert Kennedy was gunned down the night of his greatest political victory. This was the year of the Tet offensive and the beginning of the end in Vietnam, the year of the riots and chaos at the Democratic Convention, the year where George Wallace won 13 percent of the vote and five states on his pro segregation, anti-civil rights platform. This was the year where the great strides, progress, and hopes of the 1960’s ran headfirst into the hardnoise, pissed off, angry people who were terrified by just how much and how radically America had changed.

The March on Selma.

The Civil Rights Act, Fair Housing Act, and Voting Rights Act had all just been passed within the previous few years. Dr. King’s speech on the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial was still fresh in the public mind. Freedom Riders, the march on Selma, dogs getting set on people, JFK’s ideals and tragic death. The Cuban Missile Crisis, promise of equality for all, the beginning of the women’s movement, and the birth of the Social Safety Net. Change had come to America and while many celebrated it, a large portion of the country was concerned.

It’s this fear, this feeling and vibe within America that the world is coming undone, that “the good ol’ days” of America have come to an end, that Mafia 3 taps into so well, in the way that only video games really can: by letting me participate and experience it. The police come instantly when called in rich, up-scale, white neighborhoods, yet they may never come at all when called in Delroy Hollows, the black district of the city. I was followed, screamed out of stores, chased by police, and none of that got to me as much as the quiet but far more powerful accepted forms of racism. The way you are insulted and degraded in small talk with someone else. The way a husband pulls his wife away from you and to his other side when you walk by. The way that everyone has their eyes on you when you walk in a store. The simple, stark, and stunningly in-your-face message that is imparted when you see a “No Coloreds Allowed” sign in front of an establishment. It’s quiet, it’s sneaky, it’s subtle, but what it builds up to is a towering and suffocating noose of racism, that strangles and crushes so much out of you.

Lincoln Clay is angry; he’s mad at Sal Marcano for everything he’s done, but it’s more then that. His rampage through the city is that of a man, tired of getting kicked around, disrespected, and ignored for his whole life. The opening sections focus on the Dixie Mafia and the unrestrained fury with which you can go at them was a particularly compelling and a notable example. The Dixie Mafia is annihilated with the rage, fury, and pent-up feelings of a man who for years now has been kicked around or passed over even though he’s more skilled and smarter than everyone else in any room he’s in. It is the fury of a man who has been unable to do anything about this injustice and has had everything taken from him because of it and finally deciding to no longer put up with it.

Mafia 3 is a video game about the death of a southern mafia family in the 1960’s Deep South. It’s about slowly breaking the back of a family, picking off rackets, recruiting people to your side, and wonderfully distorts and pulls from much of the Mafia mythos, another excellent aspect of the game.

Yet, there is something far more to it then that. I doubt anyone will leave Mafia 3 without being astounded by how far the makers of this game pushed themselves to deliver a searing, unblinking, and in-your-face story on the injustice and brutality of the old south.

From the background conversations you hear walking the streets, to protests being organized, to the way that many of the white populace tries to fight back, to the most subtle and brilliant of all: a story that plays out over the radio of a white man shooting two unarmed black boys and the controversy over him getting away with it, something that is stunning in how relevant it is today. This is a game that is seeking to tell a far larger and more important story than one simply about the mob. Breathtaking, shocking, flawed, masterful in building real people and a living, breathing, troubled world in which they live, Mafia 3 is the year’s most important story in games, and now more than ever it’s one that should be told.

]]>1Alex O'Neillhttp://irrationalpassions.comhttp://irrationalpassions.com/?p=69462016-10-21T00:05:26Z2016-10-20T23:38:57ZSo yes, today Nintendo finally unveiled their new platform, console, and handheld, all in one: the Nintendo Switch.

Some top level stuff: it is a handheld console that can dock into a base and be played on a TV, with two slide-to-remove controllers locked into each side of the large screen. The controllers can be used with the screen, separate, or conjoined together on another piece. There are also “Pro Controller” options, and each controller “half” can be used individually.

We don’t know anything about price, storage, battery life, or really any specific details past the top-level overview, which is fine for now. I’m sure Nintendo will have more to unveil, and they did phrase this as a “preliminary announcement”. The important bit here is we know what this is, and going off of that, I’ll kind of give you my two cents on the whole situation.

This is awesome. This is exciting. This is different, and I’m interested to see what kind of path this leads Nintendo down. They showed essentially the dream machine, the console you can take with you wherever you go without losing any aspect of that experience, and demoed a bunch of software that could be feasible on it. Games like Splatoon, Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart, a new Mario game we know nothing about, and even third party games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and NBA 2K. The idea is that console games can now live anywhere, without limits, or at least that’s how it played to me. Sure, it’s weird to show a five year old game like Skyrim here, but the breadth and scope of that title is leagues and bounds beyond what we still see in handheld games today, as is Breath of the Wild.

But this leads to another huge point of contention: third parties, and their support therein.

I see a lot of this rhetoric surrounding the NX and continuing now, post unveil: Nintendo getting third parties “back”, like they ever had them to begin with. Even on a recent podcast, Kaylie Woomer came on asking how Nintendo was going to “win back” the PS4 gamer, etc. That’s just not going to happen, and it never was.

It’s contrarian to say this, especially when we see a huge wall of third party publishers that will be supporting the Switch, and an emphasis on Skyrim in this reveal, but Nintendo just doesn’t care about third parties. They never have, really. Not in the way that Sony and Microsoft do, at the very least. It’s never been about getting Titanfall for console exclusivity, or getting Call of Duty DLC first, and it never will be for them. If anything it’s more of a trick to get people to buy the hardware at launch, and stick with the games that they will continue to make for the hardware going forward, which they’ll then make more money on anyway.

This console doesn’t compete with PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. Period. Not in the same way we think of the two competing with each other. And really, do you want another one of those consoles?

The PS4 and Xbox One are essentially indistinguishable: where you play has never mattered less. The vast majority of games come to PC in bigger and better forms anyway, so this argument of “why can’t my Nintendo platform be my primary platform again” just doesn’t make sense to me. The only time that was ever really the case was with the GameCube, where the PS2 and Xbox were in relatively equal footing, and even then, each console was it’s own message.

The Switch needs to be different, and in today’s industry, there are already two home consoles you can play Destiny, Call of Duty, and Battlefield 1 on. Why not aim for the stars and do something that, in five years, goes down an entirely separate path? I don’t see major third party support lasting at all past launch, at least not in the way that PS4 and Xbox One have it, especially given that Scorpio is cresting on the horizon.

Now I’m not saying that to be a pessimist, I’m saying it because that’s what Nintendo consoles are and always have been: places to play Nintendo games. But Nintendo games don’t have to just be the Marios and the Zeldas. People will say in the past that they used to be home to the Final Fantasies and the Resident Evil 4s, but those people clearly don’t care about Nintendo’s handheld business, where those games go to thrive. Phoenix Wright? Professor Layton? These are third party games that flourish on Nintendo platforms, and now even more people will get to see them because (presumably) the handheld and console markets merge into one super platform for all things Nintendo, and their cool partnerships can grow past the niche communities they came from.

This isn’t just a platform for Nintendo games, but also for “Nintendo games”. Now, in days of yore, “Nintendo games” meant Castlevania, or Chrono Trigger, or Final Fantasy, but today it means Bayonetta 2, or Yokai Watch, or Shin Megami Tensei IV. Those games have audiences, and value, and could only work before on a Nintendo Handheld. Now the handheld and console are one in the same, meaning the third party support we see may not be Infinite Warfare DLC exclusivity, but really cool RPGs and indies that Nintendo still cultivates. They may not be the big names, but they’re not anywhere else.

So yeah, assuming the 3DS market shifts to making games for this platform as well, we could have something truly exciting on our hands. But this isn’t here to replace your PS4 or Xbox One, and frankly: I don’t want it to. I already have two wanna-be PC consoles, I don’t need another one.

This isn’t even to mention the consolidation of console and handheld development houses at Nintendo, which combined put out 12 games between the 3DS, Wii U, and eShop in 2015 alone. If all the Nintendo studios are making games for just one platform, that is far and away reason enough to buy the platform. At least for me

And we still have a lot of unknowns. Battery life? Huge issue. Storage? Better be more than 32GBs. But I don’t think it’s safe to assume anything. Will online still be a mess? Still going to have to re-buy your virtual console games? Yeah, probably.

Regardless, this is a genuinely great idea for a “Nintendo Platform”, the one place to get all Nintendo games, third party partnerships and all, and if that wasn’t the reason you were going to buy Nintendo hardware… Well then where have you been for the last 15 years?

The idea that video games are going through a period of maturation is probably the sole driving force as to why I’m still interested in the medium. I’m talking about the idea that at some point someone got up in a crowded room and shouted, “Hey, video games are written really, really poorly. Also, why is there so many dudes here? We should probably fix this.”

With that in mind, creators eventually began creating new experiences and criticism became more focused, but I think it’s important that every once in awhile we look back to figure out why games needed to change.

This should probably be self-evident, after all, the game is named Sprung.

With a title like that, this game was practically begging for me to cover it for this column, because nothing says ephemeral like naming your game after a hit T-Pain song. And yes dear reader, I fell for this blatant pandering. “Sprung, the game where everyone scores? What a goof of a game,” I said to myself. “I can’t wait to totally own this piece of video game software from 2005 with some witty T-Pain humor. I’m so dang clever.”

Turns out the joke is on me, because this game is a miserable time.

Sprung is sort of a dating and visual novel hybrid, where you get to play as two young twentysomethings by the name of Brett, a man, and Becky, a woman. Becky and Brett are good friends who have known each other since childhood and Brett has brought Becky on a trip to unwind. Set in a vacation trip at a ski-resort, you and your friends are out to make this trip memorable and have it filled with “dating, drama and debauchery.”

I myself don’t have a lot of experience with visual novels, so while my expectations were low, I was open to the idea of experiencing one. After choosing Becky I jumped in.

So Sprung, what do you have to offer?

No.

Stop it.

Wait, what?

This is the first five minutes of the game. Stop it, Sprung.

To be fair to Sprung, there are other dialogue options to choose from. But golly, every other answer is either uninteresting or ludicrous. These options go from, “How are you?” to, “Wanna do gross sex stuff with our parts?”

Also, I decided to quickly play through this opening section with Brett, and none of his dialogue options were as ridiculous or as sexually charged as Becky’s were, so that’s nice.

“Surely this can’t go on for the rest of the game, can it?” I asked myself.

Thankfully Sprung tones it down just a bit for the rest of the game, it’s still bad, but at least there are moments where you can catch your breath.

Becky’s goal on this excursion is to have so much fun that she forgets her cheating ex-boyfriend, who looks like a stand-in for Ryan Seacrest.

Becky then sets her sights on the son of the owner of the resort that they are staying in, this wonderful gentleman.

You have them exchange in a boring, “I really just want to have sex,” conversation and then they somehow become a couple. I say somehow, because the dialogue is so unnatural and cliche that it’s hard to believe that these two wanted anything more than just a one night stand, yet the game paired them up anyways.

Unsurprisingly, handsome boy cheats on Becky with her best friend, you know, the “hit my slopes” girl?

Becky then makes the very well thought out decision of sleeping with handsome boy’s best friend to get back at him. You can tell that these two boys would be good friends.

She gets back at him, breaks up their friendship, and all of this is incredibly uninteresting. So excuse me if I skipped out on a lot of the details. But this concludes in an incredibly contrived way, as Becky finds out that Brett has had a crush on her since they were kids. They hook up and live happily ever after. That’s it.

If you couldn’t tell, Sprung is rather simple, as these dialogue choices are the entire game.

There are no mini-games or diversions, but there are these self-contained instances with the characters that don’t affect the narrative. One of these “bonus episodes”, as the game calls them, was an insult competition. You know when you’re at a family gathering, one where you catch up with relatives you never see, and then suddenly your estranged uncle brings up the topic of politics and you can feel your stomach drop because of the incredibly uncomfortable conversation that’s about ensue? That’s what I felt when Sprung introduced this insult competition. Because I had no faith that this could amount to anything endearing or humorous. I was not wrong.

Warning: This part of the game is pretty nasty. It handles gender/ sexual identity, mental disability and ghosts (?) in a pretty awful manner.

Sprung is bad. When it’s not bad it’s being corny, boring, or flat out offensive. It’s crazy that this game headlined the launch lineup of the Nintendo DS and I cannot find much redeeming about it apart from the fact that you can find an actual DS in-game. I also cannot stress how uninteresting it is to play through. I hardly could stay invested through out Becky’s story, and I can’t imagine having just finished reading over five hours worth of this dialogue and then saying, ”Boy, I can’t wait to play the other campaign to see the whole story!” Sprung feels like it was made for the worst people I knew in seventh-grade, for people who thought they were mature and knew better. Thankfully a lot of those people grow up, but Sprung hasn’t, and it remains an immature joke.